


Invincible

by Kyra_Bane



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Gen, because I have a lot of feelings about Raven okay, sorry - Freeform, that implied means if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:59:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2171916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyra_Bane/pseuds/Kyra_Bane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven reflects on the two men who've had the most impact on her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invincible

Charles' tell is a hidden twist of his lips, the way his eyes dip down and away and his smile is ever so _strained_ at the edges. He calls her beautiful and wonderful and magnificent – but only when her hair is spun gold, her cheeks rosy red.

She knows he loves her, but sometimes – more often than not - that isn't enough. He's hidden himself so easily, and as much as Raven tries to tell him it's different for her, it's not something he can bring himself to comprehend.

When they meet Erik and the other mutants, it hurts in an entirely more complicated way. 

On the one hand, she can reveal her powers, flit from face to face without fear of reproach, or disgust (the guys actually find it _cool_ , after a while, the way she can impersonate their voices, their walks – and the impressions she does of Erik are a hit for one short, drunken night), but she never shows her true self for long. Every time she does, she remembers that look on Charles' face and feels shame crawl across her flesh. 

Erik is different. At first. He encourages her. He wants to see her, blue skin and all. But then he too _changes_ ; and she knows it's not how he means it, but there are parts of her she leaves behind, with the others – and those are the parts he doesn't want to see anymore. 

He doesn't want to see her smile like the girl she is; he wants to see her cold and strong. He doesn't want to see the little quirks that she picked up from Charles – tiny movements that, _of course_ , only he would recognise – he wants her to be entirely separate. He doesn't want to see her out of her blue form, not really, because he forgets that although that is her true self, it's only a part of it – and although she doesn't want to hide in any other form, they're all a part of her, too.

So when she stands on that lawn with the debris of the stadium strewn around her, blue as the day she was born but finally holding her head up high and ready to make her own way in life, she wishes for one sudden, petulant second that she had Charles' powers. She wishes she could take them through the pages of her life and see what they have inflicted – _both of them_ – and she wishes she could see what they're thinking, to see whether they've even realised that there's a world beyond the two of them.

She thinks that they probably haven't, so instead, she bares her teeth and limps away, shucking off the fear and shame that have tried their best to define her. They aren't a part of her identity. She is.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was: you want me to be ashamed, and you're so damned scared when I'm not, when I _refuse_ to be – because this is me, this is _me_ , and don't you _dare_ look away now


End file.
